Electronic devices, such as laptops, notebooks, netbooks, personal digital assistants (PDAs) and mobile phones, for example, increasingly tend to include a variety of wireless communication capabilities operating at increased data rates. The wireless communication systems used by these devices are expanding into the higher frequency ranges of the communication spectrum, such as, for example, the millimeter wave region. As will be appreciated, propagation losses and attenuation tend to increase at these higher frequencies and it can become difficult to implement antenna systems in a manner that provides the desired gain and spatial coverage.
Communication in this band at distances beyond several meters typically requires the use of highly directional antennas with tens of dB of gains or more to compensate for the attenuation losses. Some communication systems employ phased array beamforming to generate a relatively narrow beam, which results in the necessary gain to overcome path-loss associated with transmission in these higher frequencies.
Modern communication systems, however, often also require a station to be capable of covering a relatively wide area around it to communicate with other stations regardless of their locations. Techniques for changing the antenna coverage pattern are referred to as beamsteering. In traditional antenna architectures, the requirement for a highly directional coverage pattern is at odds to the requirement for an electronically steerable beam. Conventionally, it is difficult and/or costly to achieve high directivity to overcome path loss while simultaneously providing a high degree of beamsteering coverage to multiple stations.
Therefore, a need exists for a more flexible and less expensive system and method to dynamically provide high directivity coverage to multiple stations.